"Of course I have," she said, "but sometimes I've wanted the moon to wear in my hair. I'd like to live till I could see the triumph of medicine. I'd like to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the last malignant germ. I'd like a yacht. I never went sailing but once—and it was very wonderful. But I don't want any of these things in the same way I want to work."
She was not entirely satisfied. Who is? She had been taught contempt for the cheap respectability we could have secured for a small fee from a justice of the peace. I think she got as much happiness out of our relationship as most women do from their home lives. I cannot picture her as getting any added pleasure out of sewing buttons onto my clothes or darning my hose. No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a husband who came home regularly. Although she never complained, I knew that it hurt her if the rush of other—to me more important—affairs kept me in town when she was expecting me. But she would have been more unhappy if she had been in love with a man who interfered in the least in her freedom. It does not seem so unfair to me now as it did at first. We were neither of us getting all we could dream of. But no more was either of us ready to give up the half loaf.
And "half loaf" seems a very inadequate term for my share. I find myself trying to "argue" about this—I am rather vexed by things I cannot call either black or white. But so much of it was utterly unarguable. If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure it brings us, Ann was beyond question the biggest and best thing in my life. I remember one Sunday in the late fall, we were afoot with the first streak of dawn; all day long we tramped through the Jersey mountains. The autumn coloring of the maple groves was unutterably gorgeous. Just at sunset, all the western sky brilliant with red and a hundred shades of hot orange—even more brilliant than the frost nipped leaves had been—we reached a little railroad station and so came back to Cromley and the roaring wood fire and New England supper Mother Barton had prepared for us. I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such a day would not seem glorious. But to me, living six long days a week in the seething slums, in the even gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such outings were a renewal of life, a rebirth.
And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays, Ann brought me a feeling of mental and physical wellbeing and healthfulness I had never before known. My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store of energy was better adjusted, more economically utilized, because of her. I believe that a man, who says he cannot live in celibacy, is lying. But with equal emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make it wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone are extremely rare. The hours I spent at Cromley were recreation in the deepest sense of the word.
The rides into town on the early train stick in my mind as a memory apart from all the rest of my life. I seemed at those times to be in a higher mood than usual. Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found inspiration and hope for my daily grind. There was an entirely special sensation, experienced at no other time, when I found myself aboard the ferry, leaning over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some such exhilarating environment, which makes us exult in life and work and purpose. Standing forward on the upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air of the harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines from the speech of William Tell and makes me want to shout aloud—"Ye rocks and crags, I am with you once again."
None of the obvious objections to such an irregular relationship seem to me to have much weight in the face of the very real good it brought me. And yet—I cannot accept it without qualifications any more than I can condemn it. I have come to feel that its unsatisfactoriness was due to its fragmentary character. I cannot agree with Ann in her theory of keeping work and love apart. A man who divorces his religion from his business finds both of them suffer. I think the same rule holds for our problem. I did not enter in any way into Ann's work, nor she into mine. She gave me new energy for it, rested me from its weariness, but never was a part of it.
I think the fact that I can, in writing of my life, make one section deal with her and another with my work and very seldom mention both in the same paragraph, is the severest criticism which can be brought against our relationship.
III
Benson persuaded an editorial friend to publish as articles some of the lectures on criminology which I had delivered out west. A supreme court justice attempted to answer my criticisms of the judicial system and carelessly denied some patent facts. The newspapers made a nine days sensation out of our controversy. One effect of the discussion was to awaken the Prisoner's Aid Society to a realization that something ought to be done. In order to relieve themselves of this responsibility they proposed to employ me as their secretary in the place of an elderly gentleman who had held that position gratuitously—and sleepily—for twenty odd years. The offer did not, at first, attract me. My work in the Tombs held all my interest. Until Baldwin came along, I did not see any chance of real service with the society.
He was assistant superintendent of the state industrial school—a sort of intermediary prison for those offenders who were too young for state prisons and too old for the house of refuge. He had started out as a "screw" in Sing Sing, had been transferred to the state hospital for insane criminals and from there to the industrial school, where he had worked his way up to the position he then held. He really seemed to like the details of institutional management; he knew convicts and he was filled with a great enthusiasm over the possibility of reforming youthful offenders.